For A Few Souls More (Heaven's Gate Book 3) Read online

  “That’s me up there,” said Veronica. “One of them at least. So many years ago.”

  As he turned to look at her, he was struck by the absurd image of her leaning in the doorway, the cloisters visible over her shoulder.

  He turned back to look at the beach again. “How far does it go?” he asked. “If I just kept walking would I eventually reach the wall?”

  “You’re thinking the old-fashioned way. This is Heaven, it’s not bound by the old rules. This is a place of miracles, not brick walls. Come out and I’ll show you something else.”

  Arno hesitated for a moment, wanting to take in the beach a little longer. He could feel the damp of the sea spray as he breathed in. Feel the slight chill of the breeze. It was a miracle indeed.

  He stepped back through the doorway into the cloister and Veronica closed the door.

  “What’s in the next room then?” he asked, moving along the corridor. “A meadow? A town square?”

  “You don’t have to go to the next room,” she said, reaching for the door she had just closed, “this one will do.”

  She opened the door again and the silence of the cloister was broken by the sound of a crackling fire. Arno imagined a cosy hearth, or perhaps a garden bonfire filling the air with the rich, wholesome smoke of burned leaves.

  Stepping through into the dark of night, the smell of burning was, indeed, pronounced but it possessed a meaty odour. A hog roast, he decided, noting the large crowd of people, all in good cheer.

  He said as much to Veronica, who smiled. “It’s a celebration, certainly,” she admitted.

  He pushed his way through the crowd, marvelling at their physical presence. He could feel their bodies against him, and they in turn were clearly aware of him, turning to smile in his direction as he passed, encouraging him to be part of their goodwill.

  Two young boys chased one another through the crowd, momentarily using him as a barrier in their game, tugging at his jacket and darting around him before running off towards the door that still stood open a short way behind him.

  “Can they get out?” he asked Veronica.

  “Of course not,” she told him. “They’re not real, however much they may seem it. They’re just memories given weight.”

  “So what’s the celebration?” he asked as she came alongside him, leading him towards the fire. Its flames cracked and flexed, soaring upwards, tapering like the tip of a painter’s brush. He could see the silhouettes of the bonfire’s structure, the black skeleton of timber that sat at the heart of the flames. Looking upwards he saw another silhouette, one it took him a moment to recognise as a human figure, head bowed, limbs constricted as the heat drew the body inward, shrinking muscle and tendon.

  “It’s the day I died,” Veronica told him, “burned as a witch in front of the town. A source of celebration, relief and, most importantly on a cold night in October, heat.”

  Arno stared at the bonfire, unable to understand how Veronica could be so easygoing about it.

  “That’s awful!”

  “That’s superstition. But it’s also the end of a life of being an outsider and the start of something much nicer so I consider it a good day. Don’t misunderstand me, it hurt at the time, the human body is not quick to burn. For all our fat and hair we’re just big sacks of water. It took a while for the flames to burn enough that I didn’t feel them anymore. Those long minutes were full of agony and the choking smoke of my own ruination, weighed down with the certainty that help was never going to come.

  “In some way, that last was almost a relief. The long hours waiting in the town gaol while the fire was built, being marched out here and tied in place as the crowds began to gather, singing their happy hymns and calling out their jolly prayers. That was hard, because waiting always is.

  “Most suspected witches were hanged. I envied them that when I heard the kindling begin to smoulder. Hanging is at least relatively quick, though perhaps it’s no better really. I’ve seen people dance on the end of a rope, faces popping like overripe fruit, eyes slowly emerging onto their cheeks, tongues fattening. Perhaps death is always long and ignoble. Paradise has to be paid for.”

  “I was barely aware of mine,” Arno admitted. “Just a clanging noise, a momentary sense of heat and wet, a blinding pain and then a gradual slip into darkness.”

  “Good for you,” said Veronica, “I’m glad.”

  Arno felt absurdly guilty, as if he had let the side down by expiring swiftly.

  “I’m still not sure I’d want to revisit it though,” he said. “Why would I want to witness my own death?”

  “It’s liberating. It can’t hurt you anymore, it’s just an event, the beginning of something new. Why not take the time to stand back, get a little perspective on it? I come here all the time and watch the woman who used to be me as she withers and blackens.”

  “Were you a witch?”

  “Oh yes,” she smiled, “at least, in any meaningful sense. I practiced medicine using old recipes my mother had taught me, I sold folk cures, I buried things beneath the moon, I uttered old prayers. I did not, however, raise the dead or worship the devil.”

  “I suppose you would hardly have ended up here if you had.”

  “I don’t know, I get the impression that the decision as to where a soul washes up is almost entirely down to the owner of the soul in question.”

  Arno found that an uncomfortable idea to accept.

  “But surely, God...”

  “God minds his own business, Arno, much as we do ours.”

  This was a theological point too far for Arno, clashing as it did with many years of religious conviction that dictated otherwise.

  The heat of the fire seemed stifling, the smell of Veronica’s cooking flesh, the press of the crowd. And now he was being asked to accept that his God, the God to whom he had prayed throughout his life, was a disinterested deity who had no strong feelings as to the life his creations led.

  It occurred to him then that maybe this was not Heaven at all, but rather the domain more readily brought to mind when one thought of flames and the burning of human meat.

  “How do I know any of this is true?” he asked Veronica. “How do I know you’re even who you say you are?”

  “How do we know anything?” She shrugged. “I’m not the one to convince you. I’m not your nursemaid. I’m just trying to help. You were the one who came chasing after me, remember?

  Arno nodded but his mind was a mess of conflicting thoughts, a building nest of panic. “I know, I know...” he looked around, “I just... I think I need to...”

  He ran towards the door, pushing his way through the people, ignoring their shouts of surprise or recrimination. He needed to breathe cold, clean air. He needed to think for a minute, he needed silence.

  Back in the cloisters he sat down looking out over the garden and took several deep breaths.

  After a moment Veronica joined him. “I don’t mean to be insensitive,” she said, “but I really don’t need someone to worry over. Or to doubt my word. I don’t mind showing you around but I’m not going to hold your hand forever.” She looked around. “This is why it’s better if Alonzo does it. He’s better at the calm, patient business. I just want to go walking in the trees again.”

  “I’m sorry,” Arno replied, unable to keep the irritation from his voice, “but this is a great deal to take in.”

  “Yes. Well, when you’ve managed to do that come and find me in the garden, it’s far too nice a day for an argument.”

  Could he afford to lose her? In a place as large as this he might never find her again. Did he really want to go back to wandering up and down the corridors in confused silence?

  “Wait,” he said, “I’m sorry. Please don’t go. Not just yet. I’m not sure I can take being on my own again. Not yet.”

  She sighed and he heard her mutter to herself. He didn’t hear most of it but caught the word ‘nanny’ and felt an unpleasant blend of irritation and shame.

  “Jus
t a short while,” he said, “just until I get the hang of it.”

  She nodded. “Alright, but only as long as you promise not to start hurling accusations around. If there’s one thing I was glad to consign to the flames it was that.”

  “Agreed.”

  2.

  FOR A WHILE, Veronica continued to show him the secret of the dreaming rooms. After an hour so she even seemed to relish it, the earlier threats fading away as she began to enjoy the fun of making the rooms do as she wished, seeing the magic through new eyes.

  Soon, Arno was able to work a little of their magic himself, though to begin with they were rough, fragile illusions.

  “This is where I grew up,” he explained to Veronica as he led her through a small field of corn. In the distance there was a cabin; a man, Arno’s father, sweated his way through a pile of firewood. Every few seconds, the air was filled with a grunt and the heavy slap of axe on timber.

  “Charming,” she said, plucking at an ear of corn. It crumbled in her hand. “Though you need to think in more detail, I can see through your dreaming.”

  Arno nodded, looking towards his father whose face was a blur of pink skin. “He died when I was quite young,” he told her. “I can’t quite recall his face.”

  “Then give him one you can remember,” she suggested. “This is your world, you can do what you like with it.”

  Arno closed his eyes and tried to pull features together.

  Once, a few years ago, and much to his wife’s exasperation, he had taken to sketching. He was never very good at it, always struggling to get the perspective of the world to sit right on the flat dimension of the paper, but he had enjoyed the process of hashing out the lines. There was something magical about filling a blank area with the black of charcoal, pulling shapes out of nowhere and pinning them down on the page. This was no different, except this time the muscles he needed to train were not in his hands; it was no longer about translating what he saw through the tip of a pencil, rather it was about recalling with clarity. He imagined a moustache, and focused on each hair, imagined it dark at the root and fading to light grey at the tip. He looked through that imaginary bush to the skin beneath, pricked with follicles like holes for thread. He thought of the skin of the lips, shiny and creased. He imagined the eyes, light grey, filled with filaments and swirls.

  “Much better,” said Veronica, looking at the man who was his newly-imagined father. “You’ll be a master at this in no time.”

  At her prompting, he even showed her the moment of his death, or at least how he imagined it. It was difficult to be precise under the circumstances. They sat on a sack of corn, hiding in the shadows and watching the memory of Arno as he finished unloading his cart of supplies, wiping the sweat of heavy lifting from his brow with the handkerchief his wife had embroidered in happier times. The cloth was scarlet, his initials stitched in white. The treacherous Zeke loomed behind him, spade in hand as his wife looked on from behind the crack of the half-open door.

  Arno wondered if Zeke was still hot from his exertions in the marriage bed, corrupting its sheets with an intruder’s sweat and seed. He supposed it likely. Perhaps it was the intensity of the lovemaking that had brought the strength of conviction to his shoulders and biceps as he hefted the spade and swung it. There was a faint whisper of displaced air, and then a musical clang, the ringing of a dinner gong or a cheap church bell.

  Arno flinched at the sight of it. The face of his imagined shadow contorted in an ugly, unflattering collection of features, puffy and folded. He looked, Arno decided, like a man in the grip of a sneeze so violent it had blown off the back of his head.

  “What a way to go,” said Veronica. “Quick and percussive. There’s a lot to be said for a surprise killing.”

  “I would have rather avoided it,” Arno admitted.

  Zeke the Murderer, spade still in hand, looked around. “Who’s there?” he called, his voice thick with panic.

  “Oh,” said Arno, “he heard us.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Veronica, stepping out into the light. “What’s he going to do? Even if he were more than a memory, you can only kill a person once.”

  She gave a scream and jumped on Zeke, tugging at his thinning hair. He dropped the bloodied spade, raising his hands to defend himself. They spun around, Zeke’s boots connecting with the still-twitching body of the man he had just brained, sending them tumbling into the dirt and straw that lined the floor.

  From the doorway, Arno’s wife entered, coming to the aid of her lover.

  Arno, knowing an act of catharsis when presented with one, picked up the discarded spade and brought out its music by swinging it straight at her face. It’s good for the soul, this slapstick of memory, he thought as the clang of metal against teeth rang loud and clear.

  “Better?” Veronica asked, bouncing up and down on the now wailing Zeke, a whirl of arms and legs, pummelling at a man who had never quite regained the sense to defend himself after the initial attack.

  Arno looked down at his wife, her face now a comical grotesque of flattened nose and bloodied lips. “I’m not sure,” he said, “can it ever be right to take pleasure in hurting someone else?”

  “Ah...” Veronica sighed, taking a rest from beating Zeke’s head against the ground, “I can see how you ended up here. What a pure soul you are.”

  “I loved her after all,” Arno admitted, “even if that love wasn’t always returned.”

  “She encouraged her lover to empty your skull of its contents, Arno, she wasn’t worthy of love.”

  “We’re all worthy of love, some of us just aren’t terribly good at receiving it.”

  “What a sweet little man you are.” She stood up, wiped her bloodied hands on her dress and took him by the arm. “And an utter wet blanket.”

  He sighed. “She certainly thought so,” he admitted. “Say what you like about Zeke, he was never boring.”

  “He is now,” she laughed, “though I’ll admit he entertained for a while. Come on, let’s go out and find some sun to push away all this gloom.”

  They returned to the garden, having had their fill of dreaming for a while.

  For some time, they just sat in silence, Arno pleased that Veronica now appeared happy to be in his company. He didn’t know how many hours they had been in The Junction, the passage of time was slippery here in the afterlife, but the reticence she had shown earlier had completely evaporated.

  He looked at his watch. It claimed to be twenty past eight but the second hand was frozen and he knew that it showed the time of his death, that final second when time still mattered. What business did hours and minutes have here in Heaven? You couldn’t break an eternity down on a clock. Or could you? The horizon showed signs of darkening, so even the everafter knew the passage of day and night.

  “It does get dark here then?” he asked.

  “Oh yes,” she said. “What would paradise be without a cool evening or a midnight full of stars? God knows the beauty of a sunset or a dawn and is happy to share them.”

  One thought led to another as the sky continued to darken.

  “Where do we sleep?” he asked.

  “Wherever we like,” she said. “You can imagine whatever you like in The Junction, dream up a bed or a warm hearth.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “No,” she admitted, taking hold of his hand. “I like to sleep beneath the stars.”

  They appeared above them, as if summoned, and perhaps they were; after all, if Arno had learned anything about Heaven he had learned it was a place that shifted with the desires of its inhabitants.

  She pulled him down next to her and guided his awkward fingers as to the way of her dress. As he stripped her of it, he was pleased to note it no longer bore her bloodied handprints from earlier. If their crimes were so transient that their evidence vanished so quickly, they couldn’t be mortal sins. The thought led him to consider other acts that might once have shamed him and he busied himself with them as the fore
st glowed around them, the trees filled with starlight.

  Two lovers in a garden in Paradise. Naked. Unburdened.

  To Hell with serpents.

  3.

  FOR THE FIRST few days, Arno managed to mark the passage of time but eventually he stopped bothering. It hardly mattered.

  He and Veronica split their time between the garden and The Junction, sleeping together under the open sky.

  For the first couple of nights, Arno found sleep hard. He didn’t feel tiredness so profoundly now, he supposed you had to be alive to really grow tired. But, as Veronica explained, sleep was a pleasure in and of itself. How blissful was it to open one’s eyes as the warmth of the sun heated your cheeks, gazing out onto a fresh day? Why give up on any pleasures now they were your life? Soon, he caught the trick of it, the earth a better mattress than any other his back had known.

  It didn’t take him long to realise that Veronica had been as happy to meet him as he her. For all her bravado and insistence that she had been happy on her own, she never left his side now and he recognised a soul retrieved from loneliness.

  It was a strange Heaven, he decided, that contained so few of the blessed. Of all the questions that had been on his mind during that first day in the afterlife, that was the only one that clung. Where was everyone?

  “It’s a big place,” Veronica said, “bigger than we could ever really conceive of. Is it so strange that we don’t bump into others?”

  And perhaps that was the truth of it. If the acreage of Heaven was as vast as God could imagine, a place unbound from the geography of rock and ocean, then how could it ever be filled? Still, in the quiet moments, when he and Veronica weren’t exploring landscapes in The Junction, or exploring each other in the garden, the question rolled around in Arno’s head. It was the one thing that didn’t let him rest.

  Then finally, that one question robbing him of his peace, he found a serpent he could ask for an answer. He found Alonzo.